April 19th, 2003. Smartest thing I ever did.
And a good time was had by all!
4/19/2003, Cocoa Beach, FL
- 4/19/2003, Cocoa Beach, FL
Photos by Eddie Wadsworth
We have a family of cardinals moving into the palm just outside our porch. At least I hope we still do. We (myself & Nickie, the gray cat) noticed the couple checking out the palm yesterday and today we noticed that construction had commenced. While speaking to my bride on the phone and watching the male bring materials to the female I realized that I should photograph the progress of their efforts. After hanging up I immediately grabbed the camera and came back out. There was a battle underway. Two males were fighting it out big time in the back yard, squawking and tumbling across the ground with wings a-flapping. I got some shots over the course of 3-4 minutes before combat left the area. I’ll never know which one won.
The female in the equation fled the scene.
Rockledge, FL 4/6/11
Above: Early construction
Rockledge, FL 4/6/11
Above: Combat
Rockledge, FL 4/6/11
Above: Between rounds
Scheduled for final launch on 4/19/11. Eighth anniversary of the smartest thing I ever did.
Pad A, KSC, FL 3/11/11
Pad A, KSC, FL 3/11/11
Last weekend we had the Salt Lake City contingent of the family in town. While they were here I took the opportunity to set up my lights in our (cramped) living room and take some portraits. As you can see below, our family is all seriousness, all the time.
Moral of the story? Be warned: come to our house and you WILL be shot.
Rockledge, FL, 3/8/11
Rockledge, FL, 3/8/11
Rockledge, FL, 3/8/11
Rockledge, FL, 3/8/11
On a beautiful Thursday afternoon, and after a series of delays, the shuttle Discovery lifted off Pad-A and headed downrange for the last time. There are only two more launches until we enter a long dry spell for the manned space flight program. For the final launch I will certainly be on the base (Kennedy Space Center) somewhere, but for this one, I left work a couple of hours early, giving up a great view (and photo op). Lots of people are coming to our area to view the launches. Lots and lots. After many years of the general public being pretty blase about them, these last few shots are attracting hordes of people. And they are coming in their cars.
Imagine a couple of hundred-thousand people coming to your community for the day. Imagine that the best sites-of-choice for most of these folks involve crossing multiple bridges. Then they all get in their cars at the same time and try to get home. You can imagine the result. Launch was about 5:00 pm. There were still jams at 12:30 the next morning. It wasn’t pretty.
I had to work the previous launch, so I couldn’t avoid dealing with it. The secret is to get out quickly in order to miss the bow-wave of humanity heading west. I have to get out before the tourists leaving the Space Center clog the Center’s exit then head south to get to a bridge before the mass of cars from the beachside reaches them. I have two choices of causeways to take to the mainland. The first one leads straight to the most popular areas and is all highway. It’s always a parking lot as I drive beneath it. The second one is a surface street that also leads straight to the beach, but it takes longer for them to get to the bridge. I can usually make it across there and home free without too much problem.
This launch I went to a viewing stand out on a hiking trail in the swamp/marsh to take a couple of photos and run home. Turns out there was a branch in the way. Limited photos, but it was a pretty shot. And I got home after only an extra 20 minutes.
STS-133, 2/24/11, Merritt Island, FL
Geek Note: That branch really pisses me off. I used Google Earth to draw a line from the viewing stand to the pad. I noted local landmarks to help me line up the camera towards the pad. Looked perfect, I had been worried about the branch but it wasn’t it the way. When it launched I was pointing too far east. I don’t know what happened, but I’ll blame operator error for now.
A typical bookshelf in our house.
Both of us are heavy readers. I have had books in progress for the vast majority of my life, usually at least two of them at a time. My sister is like that. My daughters are like that. My youngest once spent a couple of weeks crying herself to sleep. She could see her sister lying in her own room with a book and she was so frustrated that she couldn’t yet read. It’s an addiction with as strong a pull as any other. The Utah contingent of this family travels with a large bag of books. And an even larger bag of shoes, but that’s a subject for a later post.
Which leads us to the problem shared by bibliophiles all over the world: what to do with all of these damn books? All of our shelves are at least two levels deep in both directions: up & out. We have boxes of books in storage. They’re everywhere. We try to weed them out by donating to the local library sale, but that doesn’t always work out. I once bought a book at the sale, only to get home and quickly realize that I had already read it. That, in fact, I had donated that very copy.
Which leads me to LibraryThing. It’s a site that catalogs and organizes your library. You enter your books and you have a record of your library. It generates statistics. (How many science fiction? How many by Neal Stephenson?) You can review/comment/rate your books. How many others share your interests? Lots and lots of different ways to look at your library. Most importantly, you can see what you’ve read and what you want to read. And it’s cheap. It’s free for the first 200 books and only $25 for a lifetime unlimited membership.
They sell a cheap bar code scanner ($15) that just lets you scan the ISBN and it adds the book to your library. For 15 bucks it makes the data entry task for a library of our size trivial. I’m totally there. After less than a week with the scanner I have 84 books entered. The vast majority of these are from one bookshelf, and they were the ones that were on top of, or in front of, the other books. It may not help us physically organize our collection, but at least we’ll know what we’ve got.
To see our library, go here.
(BTW: I had a problem when I ordered my membership due to operator error. I contacted their customer support and they rock! Quick response and they fixed my screw-up in short order. I love these guys.)
Launch Day, late 60s-early 70s?
My career in the aerospace industry was influenced from a young age by my father, a mechanical engineer. I remember not being able to sleep on a Christmas Eve due to the repeated thumping on the living room ceiling, which happened to be the floor of my bedroom. It turned out that it was caused by my dad and Uncle Bob playing with one of my presents, a toy launch pad with a rocket that launched pretty well. Well enough at least to keep a 6 year old boy awake with odd noises.
In Baltimore we lived in a suburb called Lutherville, which was adjacent to another suburb called Timonium. My dad and a couple of his buddies went through a model rocket phase which led to the creation of the Lutherville-Timonium Rocket Launching And Martini Drinking Society. I was the Beer Drinking Division.
We went out several times to “launch” and the experience directly benefited my later career by training me in the acceptance of failure. Let’s just say that Rocket Science was not their strong point. The white rocket shown above was mine, and one of the few that launched successfully. BTW: that’s my dad on the left. The gentleman who is showing us his derriere is Mr. Morris. Mr. Morris had a little yellow two stage rocket that never did launch successfully. He ended up giving it to me in disgust. I never got it to go either.
Years later, while living within the Baltimore City limits, I would go next door to the high school field and launch. I think I shot a total of maybe 20 times from that site. Seven or eight of those times I had to get the local kids to climb on the roof of the school to retrieve the rocket. Three or four times I had to get the Duty Officer of the Marine Corps Reserve outfit that was next door to go on their roof for the retrieval. He wasn’t very happy with us, but he got used to it.
These were fun times that I had with my dad and his friends. This was at the beginning of my teens, a stretch of time that was, well, turbulent for all concerned. It was one last period of bonding until I emerged on the other side of being a teenager. Nowadays I’m still involved in shooting off things that go whoosh into the sky. The scale is a bit different, but the idea is the same. And just as much fun.
STS-121, July 4, 2006, KSC, FL
OK, so I haven’t been posting recently. Here are some random images from the last several months to get back into the swing of things. First up is the view from the balcony of our hotel room on Thanksgiving morning. Fog & sunrise combined to provide an interesting shot.
Lake Buena Vista, FL, 11/25/10
From our New Years camping trip, here’s a couple of critters. First up, a Sand Hill Crane with a broken leg.
Moss Park, Orange County, FL, 12/31/10
The deer came through our site twice a day.
Moss Park, Orange County, FL, 12/31/10
Moss Park, Orange County, FL, 12/31/10
Finally, another deer shot from 2 years ago. This is on the Johnson Space Center property in Houston.
JSC, TX, 1/22/09
Stay tuned…I’ll be posting more regularly. No, really.
USS Torsk, Baltimore, MD, 12/27/08
On the 14th of August, 1945, the USS Torsk fired the last torpedoes of the Second World War. Those shots sunk 2 Japanese Coastal Defense ships, the last enemy sinking of the war. In 1968, after a long post-war career, she was decommissioned and in 1973 she was berthed in the Baltimore Inner Harbor. I looked at her for years, but had never gone aboard and taken the tour.
Christmas of 2008 we went to Baltimore to visit family. Two days after Xmas, on a misty, foggy morning, we found ourselves wandering the Inner Harbor. I decided to take the tour while MLW went shopping. “I’ll be back in an hour,” I promised.
Paid my admission and climbed aboard. They funnel you down a gangway in the stern that they installed into the Aft Torpedo Room. You work your way forward from there. It was empty when I got there, so I started taking photos and looking around. Very cool stuff if you’re into that kinda thing and I was enjoying myself. I moved into the next compartment where one of the volunteers was working.
Now, if you know me then you know I speak the truth when I say that I can talk to pretty much anybody, pretty much anywhere, about pretty much anything.
I started asking questions and we immediately hit it off. He started explaining the workings of a WWII attack sub, I kept asking questions and he ended up taking me through the entire boat, compartment by compartment, from aft to bow, telling me everything. At one point there was a gangway going down a deck that was roped off: the battery compartment & machine shop. He took me down there, showed me the batteries. I saw the bunks, the engine room, the map room. Hung out in the Galley with him and the other volunteers. The Radio Room. Past another roped off ladder, this time up, into the Conning Tower where I saw the “computers” used to determine the attack parameters. They let me look through the periscope. I was in heaven.
While in the Conning tower my phone went off. MLW asked where the hell I was. I had been gone for not quite 2 hours. Time to go.
It was a great 2 hours, though. Fascinating hardware, lots of stories about how things worked, boat and crew. I had the boat to myself (2 other folks came through the entire time I was aboard and they blew by) and the volunteers were great. If you get the chance, take the tour. It made me really appreciate a small portion of what those poor young guys went through. It must have been terrifying.
Next time, I want to go aboard the SS John W. Brown, one of only two restored Liberty Ships in the country, which is docked nearby.
I’ll budget more time for that one.
Below: The Aft Torpedo Room. Note the bunks upper right & left. These were cramped and uncomfortable.
USS Torsk, Baltimore, MD, 12/27/08
USS Torsk, Baltimore, MD, 12/27/08
Above: The “comfortable” bunks. Considered spacious, it just shows that everything’s relative. Note the gangway on the left that leads down to the battery room.
Below: Hanging in the Galley. My guide is on the left.
USS Torsk, Baltimore, MD, 12/27/08
Below: The Conning Tower. It was very cramped. I’m not that big of a guy, but I had to move sideways when passing the periscope.
USS Torsk, Baltimore, MD, 12/27/08
Geek Note: The interior of a submarine is an interesting environment to shoot in. The 10-22mm lens and good flash made it possible. Love that lens.
Sorry for not posting recently. It’s not for a lack of material, rather a lack of time and discipline. We have a lot of material to post here, we just need to get off of our butts and do it.
Appalachian Trail, GSMNP, October 6, 2010
I spent last week on what has become my annual solo trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I try to go between Labor Day & the changing of the leaves in order to avoid the crowds. This typically involves dodging hurricanes heading towards Florida, since I promised my bride that, after an unfortunate incident involving my being out of town during a hurricane, I would not travel if there is a storm heading our way. Unlike previous years, this was not an issue this time. Which is not to say that the weather was not a player in this year’s trip.
This annual adventure has rapidly become a highlight of the year. I can do day hikes at my own tempo (slow, not like other crazy people in this family) and take lots of pictures of landscapes that are notably unlike Florida. Trust me, when you’ve seen one alligator you’ve seen them all. I have a beautiful campsite in the Elkmont campground that I return to each year. At night I sit by the fire with my adult beverage and eat well. Very well. Over the course of my three full days, I hiked about 19 miles of trails, took a horseback ride (just me & the guide…very nice), took 340 photos (of which a couple are pretty nice), met many very nice people on the trail and walked in snow. Snow. Did I mention the cold? This Florida boy camped in 35 degree weather. While it was refreshing after our typical hot, humid summer, it was a bit shocking during my middle of the night sojourns out of the tent.
This was the first year that I didn’t see any bear. Darn.
Sunrise, GSMNP, October 5, 2010
Alum Cave Bluffs Trail, GSMNP, October 5, 2010
Note: The peak in the right foreground in the photo below is Porter’s Mountain
View from Charlies Bunion, GSMNP, October 6, 2010
The World as We See It 